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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the